I know, I know. I’ve been horrible about this blogging thing. It’s often hard to figure out what to blog about for starters and as soon as you have an idea about what you can blog about, the phone rings or you get an email. Geesh!

Today I’d like to blog about Akismet and the Akismet key provided by WordPress. Before I get into that though, I’d like to say that up until this time, I’ve been a great fan of Joomla and still am. I started building websites with Mambo and when some of the members left and went to Joomla, I liked support and community members around it. Needless to say, I ended up getting very lucky with this domain name. So not all familiar with wordpress, I thought because it said blog and WordPress was the most popular, I’d use it. Not only for the experience of using it, but for my clients who may ask for it. [Read more…]

So you know, I build websites and along with that service, assist my customers with managing their domain names. I end up dealing with a lot of different registrars and web hosting as well as web developers and I’m here to tell ya, what a mess ICANN has allowed the industry has become.

Before I get into much more, I have currently been on hold and in live chat for over an hour and been oh hold for exactly 58 minutes with iPower.com. I have a client who had originally purchase his domain and hosting at IPOWER.com or iPower web. This is a company that resells domains to it’s customers from Tucows, commonly known as OpenSRS. My client wants the domain name transferred into his DomainPar.com account so we can set up hosting there as well. [Read more…]

When I think of GoDaddy I can’t help think of brunettes with big boobs and a pimpish looking Bob Parsons that hosts his own online talk show, similar in format to the Howard Stern show. This is the image that Bob Parsons and GoDaddy have incorporated into their websites and their advertising.

Recently, Fox television rejected two of the latest GoDaddy Ads . In his latest blog post, Bob Parsons writes:

“Last week, FOX network rejected Go Daddy’s Super Bowl ad because an actor referred to a beaver – a replica beaver that was, in fact, being portrayed – as a “beaver.” We were told that under no circumstance could we use that word, and if we didn’t say the word “beaver,” the ad would be approved. [Read more…]

Today I went to EJ Thomas Hall in Akron Ohio to a forum that the University of Akron sponsors. They invite different speakers from all over the world for the benefit of the local community. The speaker today was Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics which is basically a real good introduction for non-internet savvy individuals who desire to understand the paradigm shift of both the corporate business model and social collaboration. [Read more…]

I get this question a lot. I’ve also heard many people talk about how they wont do business with PayPal because they’ve heard of people getting victimized by PayPal. While I can’t speak for everyone else, I want to share a little bit of experience that may be helpful to some other users out there who might be on the fence about doing business on the Internet and choosing Paypal as a service provider. [Read more…]

Most people refer to God like another human being and that he’s allowing people to starve and evil in the world. That’s funny to me because it’s man that has created all of that. Man creates his world through his thoughts and perception and it’s man who has created the evil.

We currently have mess because Man for one, doesn’t understand MAN. Second, because Man doesn’t understand what God is. Religions have defined God for each sect. Each religion views God differently. Matter of fact, God is a name man created to identify this source we know very little about. [Read more…]

Monetizing Your Domain Names

As a domain name collector, I’ve found through the years that there are different ways to monetize traffic to a domain name. I’ve recently experienced a product called “Build a Niche Store“, and consider it to be the best $100 I’ve spent on a ClickBank product. With so many products out there on the market, it would be impossible to use them all but when it comes to monetizing domain names that fall into a niche category, Build a Niche Store is the best I’ve seen.

What is Build a Niche Store?

Build a Niche Store is basically a website system or builder that allows you to create a website quickly serving Niche eBay products via an affiliate RSS Feed from Commission Junction. Essentially, Build a Niche Store is a php software you can unzip and upload to your host and produce a basic eBay Niche store within minutes. The neat thing is that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do this. There’s also not an overwhelming learning curve. It’s simple and effective and it seems to be working well based on my experimentation with it so far. The product cost is around $100 and is available for purchase through ClickBank.com.

Niche Stores and Ebay

An eBay Niche store actually makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, you can go to eBay and it takes a while to find exactly what you are looking for. There are so many options and so many ways to search eBay, it can be confusing for someone wanting to browse a certain category. Basically with a Niche Store, you do that searching for them and provide them narrowed results in a nice looking template. The beauty of this is that eBay will pay you for products that are sold through your eBay store.

Hockey Store – StickRack.com – example

This was my first BANS site. Nothing fancy and not a lot of time into it, but effective so far in producing more income than it would if it were parked at Sedo, Fabulous, Domain Sponsor or any others. This website was basically slapped up on the server with about 2 hours getting used to how things work and reading directions. The neat thing is, it’s already producing a little bit of income which so far is more than traditional parking. The potential is there, the next step is optimizing. I’ll do some blogging on this as well.

That’s simple. eBay has an affiliate program that is managed by Commission Junction that pays you for traffic you send through your site to eBay.

“You will be compensated for traffic you send to ebay.com in two distinct ways: earn between 50% and 75% of eBay’s Revenue (not item sale price) on ALL Winning Bids or Buy It Nows (BINs) within 7 days of an affiliate action AND up to $35.00 for each active registered user!”

Now, I’ve been an eBay powerseller and have sold products on eBay. There’s a lot involved in this. First you have to set up your eBay account… which can take up some time. Then you have to take pictures of items and write descriptions. Usually powersellers have some sort of services they purchase monthly to assist them with this. Once your product is sold, you collect payment and then box and ship to the user. Selling on eBay is not a piece of cake at all. It takes work and emails and following up with your customers. There are many times I’ve sold items and actually lost money on poor shipping calculations, PayPal fees, damaged goods, etc.

With BANS you just sell others peoples items. It’s that easy. The Build a Niche Store software is a content management system all by itself and you simply enter your CJ.com PID into the correct spot on the set-up and then enter the category number of the Ebay items you want to host. The auctions are fed into your site through the affiliate RSS feed. Essentially, you can set up and optimize a store and it’s on autopilot. Then build another one and keep going. The sky is the limit. What’s neat, is you are making money and not having to deal with all the headaches of being an eBay seller.

Here are some steps with Links to get you started:

Build a Niche Store – First step, read the page. Understand it. It’s not a lot of phony hype and it does work. It also provides you with exact directions. Purchase and download the zip file.

Commission Junction – Sign up through their affiliate program. Search for the Advertiser eBay and request to be added as an affiliate. This process is usually approved automatically and quickly.

Hosting Account – Get a hosting account through HostGator. For Niche Stores, I recommend the Swamp which is $14 a month and can host unlimited websites.

The rest is relatively detailed but not difficult at all. I will produce a video for this and upload it eventually with text to follow.

OK, that’s one of my New Year Resolutions. I apologize to the 10,000 people who visit here each month that there hasn’t been any updates however, now it’s time to commit and start blogging. I guess it starts with a first step… back to, “What do I blog about?”…

… Well for starters, it’s a new year. This is 2008 and it’s going to be a good year for everyone and I just have that feeling. While there may be a lot of financial systems failing currently and the war going on in Iraq, and of course the new Presidential Elections for the US… It’s still going to be a good year! Why?

That’s a great question. My answer is simple. It’s going to be a good year because I’m going to make it a good year. Why is that?… Well, because I’m not going to make it a bad year. Does that make sense? Most certainly it does. Please allow me to explain.

The year ahead, this great 2008, is going to be exactly what we make of it. If we believe it’s going to be a bad year, then what can we expect?… Bad! It’s very elementary if you think about it. You will get what you expect. Same goes for life. If our expectations are small, so is the get.

I’m happy to be here and happy to be blessed with a computer and the opportunity to live and grow up in this age of technology and the Internet. It’s 2008 and it’s going to be a good year because we’re going to make it a good year. There are a lot of negative things happening in the world today and it’s important to focus on the positive things that are equal to, or even greater than all the negative ones. As I grow older I have discovered for myself that the Universe is merely a reflection of what each of us reflects into it.

Now that I have started this blog… and after many years of things going on that I could blog about… where is one supposed to start?

I see that there are many people who start blogs but never write anything or update it infrequently and I think they have some of the same thoughts that I’m having… Where do I start?… Well, I guess this is my second post.